Enterprise Content Management Products

Menu

Tag Archives: mobile

Post navigation

I love being able to not just fill out, but also submit forms electronically either from my PC or my tablet. It’s easy to change information if I mistype something or need to change information. With paper forms, you typically have to reprint the page and enter in all the information again. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve screwed up filling out a paper form and had to redo it. There’s also something nice about being able to click the “Submit” button at the end and not have to print and mail a document in and double-check to make sure it was received on the other end a few days later.

I’ve noticed that more companies and organizations are turning to electronic forms for both consumers and constituents. Users can fill out forms and attach relevant documents or information to the form and in some cases, even sign the form right then and there, no printing necessary! Continue reading →

What does this trend data really mean? Well, for starters, it might mean that more people will be playing Angry Birds than ever before. From a business point-of-view, tablets and smartphones are both disruptive and viewed like a Swiss Army Knife: a single device that can do many things. However, with these mobile devices, there is both the opportunity for rewards and the potential for risks. It makes no difference if the mobile device is provided by your employer or is a BYOD situation. On the whole, the same rules apply; however, there are some nuances about BYOD that invite additional risks to be mitigated. Continue reading →

Small businesses are major players in the U.S. Economy. According to Forbes.com, over 50% of the working population (120 million individuals) works in a small business.

With the advancements in technology it has become easier for people to create and run small businesses, without insurmountable operating expenses, out of their homes. In fact, 52% of all small businesses are home-based (Forbes.com). This has led to small business growth nationwide and changes in the way these businesses operate.

How do they manage the increasing inflow of content to their businesses?

With the advent of LTE, HSPA+, and Wi-MAX (collectively referred to as 4G) information can be transferred at speeds never before thought possible. 4G for most of us is old news. However, it occurred to me that organizations rarely consider how this efficiency can actually be utilized. Most of my peers/colleagues utilize one form of a cloud drop box or another. These tools are great for one or two Power Point presentations and maybe a couple case studies. I remember the first time I turned on my iPad/Mobile HotSpot and opened cloud app. ABC, it was information at my fingertips when and where ever I wanted it—I felt a sense of freedom. As time passed I added more and more “IMPORTANT” content to my personal cloud. Certainly you can all guess what happened next. The pile of paper in my cloud was 10x the size of the stack of paper on my desk at work. 4G connectivity, the cloud and “IMPORTANT” information is a great tool. If you add one more piece to the puzzle (enterprise content management) it can be invaluable to your organization.

For a moment try to imagine where organized, “MOBILE” and secure content could add value to your organization. Content that is safely tucked away behind your firewall yet still available to the appropriate men and women in the trenches. The applications begin to seem endless. As you know almost any type of files can be managed inside an ECM solution.

In one scenario a construction manager is remodeling the third floor in a local university building. It becomes immediately apparent that the plumbing was modified at some point to accommodate for an additional bathroom. The CM only has the original blue prints in his/her possession. What he/she needs are the updated “As-Is” drawings. These documents have of course been printed, folded and filed away back at HQ. It is obvious now that dollars are about to be spent on the recovery of these drawings. The only question that remains now is; how many dollars could be saved?

Decision makers and labor workers alike can all benefit from the innovation of fast mobile internet. However, the content being sought after or delivered must be organized and secure. I challenge anyone who reads this post to add a comment below: How can high speed mobile internet and content management be effectively combined to reduce cost or increase an organization’s bottom line?

People who are not in the ECM/ technology industry are most likely unfamiliar with this three- word term. Just watch our hilarious Street Smarts Video to hear the various answers. This is a phrase that can sound a little intimidating and jarring. I, myself am new to this industry, and I’m not going to lie—right before working at ImageSource I was intimidated. Prior to my start date, I had repetitive thoughts running through my head, “How am I going to learn and master the Enterprise Content Management industry?” But luckily when I began working at ImageSource these thoughts soon disappeared.

Don’t be fooled by the ECM term, a broad description will make understanding this industry possible. ImageSource is a full service Enterprise Content Management solutions provider and integrator. This means we offer services and infrastructure using paperless technology. Everyone has tons of papers, documents and files. This can range from a small doctor’s office that needs to keep track and organize their patient’s health charts, medical history, insurance, etc. to a larger scale such as an entire city in California: organizing, processing and recording thousands of papers a day. ECM comes in by capturing (such as scanning), organizing and storing all these papers which can be easily retrieved even from a remote location.

Real Life Snippet:
Just yesterday I went to the car dealership to pick up our company car after getting it serviced. Like any other business, you receive services, pay for the services, and then get a receipt. Upon receiving the receipt my first thought was, “I need to make a copy so I have one for my expense report and so that our accountants have a copy as well.” BUT this is where ImageSource comes in. ImageSource offers a product called ILINX®. And keeping up with the times, we have a smart phone app called ILINX® Capture Mobile. All I had to do was grab my iPhone, open up the app, and capture the receipt by taking a picture. I then typed in some data to index the receipt such as the date, location, and name of the company. The image then converted to a pdf and was immediately e-mailed to my own address. Now when I send in my expense report, I have the receipt ready to go.

My brief personal experience shows that we can even hone down to the individual such as you or me to explore the benefits of ECM and its services– all of which makes our daily lives a bit easier.

We live in a fast-paced world. This is a time when we want information instantly, at the click of a button, on the tips of our fingers. We want information about the economy, the latest news updates, what our friends are doing Friday night, etc.

On any given day, I can open up my Internet browser and check out Google News, then head over to the New York Times and CNN to get my fix for what’s going on in our country and the world. Then I pop open Twitter to get the latest happening in the Enterprise Content Management and Document Imaging world, and to get a good laugh from some crazy tweeps I follow. I’ll open up articles and pictures and see what’s been happening for the last few hours. Jump over to Facebook and I can see what my friends did last night, check out new pictures, see who’s gotten married, broken up, or who’s in a “complicated” relationship. I can see which of my friends once again posted too much information or put up sayings or quotes that make you smile.

The cool thing about all this is that I can also do it from my smart phone. It doesn’t matter if I’m sitting at my desk, riding in a car, waiting for an airplane or lying in a hammock. I can take this information with me everywhere I go.

Moving off topic for just a second; I’m a compulsive receipt-keeper. I keep every receipt I get, and I’m super crazy about it. I like to keep track of purchases, see which pair of shoes my paycheck may have gone to, or see how much I spent on groceries. In my work life, I keep receipts to show our Accounting Department that I’m not spending company money on weekend getaways or skinny jeans.

However, up until recently, this was a task that I could only take care of at my desk. That’s where my scanner is and where my documents are saved. I would have to save up all my receipts from various trips and then wait to scan them in at the office.

Enter ILINX® Capture Mobile! ILINX Capture Mobile is an app that allows you to capture information anywhere. Traditional capture software requires a desktop installation. But now, I can simply grab my phone and capture the documents I need.

For example, say I’m at a customer dinner and picked up the tab. Now, instead of having to be sure I bring that receipt back to capture at my desk, I can open up ILINX Capture Mobile and capture that receipt after I’ve signed. It converts the image to a PDF, and I can give it
some index values. I can then email it to myself to refer back come expense report time.

So if you’re anything like me and hate carrying around a handful of receipts, I would definitely recommend getting ILINX Capture Mobile. It’s available through the App Store and even better, it’s free! It’s simple, easy to use, and will alleviate the pain our wallets feel from bulging at the seams from being overstuffed with receipts. But more importantly, it allows us to capture that critical information, index it, and send it back to ourselves for later use, all at, well, the click of a button.

What the Experts are Saying: Technical Expertise for ECM

ClickOnce is a deployment technology that enables you to create self-updating Windows-based applications that can be installed and run with minimal user interaction. ClickOnce deployment provides 3 major benefits for any .NET application: Updates are provided automatically, downloading only those parts of the application that have changed. Each application is self-contained and cannot interfere with […]

Migrations from systems like IBPM to ILINX can be fraught with issues that can bite the unwary in very bad places. However, if you are aware of such problems, you can plan ways to mitigate them and have a successful migration in the end. One issue we run into is documents that have a page […]

A couple weeks ago I wrote a post about ECM migrations, with a focus specifically on moving content from Oracle IPM/Imaging to other destination systems—projects we’ve been performing a lot of lately. Our tools of choice for migrations are ILINX Export and ILINX Import, but if the destination ECM system isn’t supported by ILINX Import, […]

One of the things we’ve always done a lot of here at ImageSource is migrations, it’s definitely one of our core competencies. For a little more information on our approach to migrations, you can review my earlier post here. Lately the migrations have been more focused because most of them involve moving content out of […]

Starting with ILINX Capture v6, the Release configurations are stored within the ILINX database. In ILINX Capture v5x, the ILINX Release configurations were stored in XML files on a disk. ILINX Capture called ILINX Release using a SendAndReceivedReply IXM. The change to store the settings within the ILINX database is very useful for a number of […]